From Loving in the Moment: Moving from Ego to Essence in Relationships by Gina Lake, which will be available April 1, 2010 and can be purchased on Amazon.com or by going to our bookstore.

Some people are easier to love than others, and they are the ones, therefore, who experience a lot of love. They experience it both within themselves and coming to them from others. What is their secret? Amazing good looks? No. Stunning personalities? No. Money and power? No. Their secret is none of the things we assume will make us more lovable. Their secret is that they love, and by that I mean, they accept others the way they are. Isn’t that when you feel loved—when you feel accepted rather than judged, which is the usual way egos interact with each other? 

Acceptance is the opposite of judgment and the antidote to it, and it brings us the experience of love. What is the experience of love? It is the experience of accepting and being accepted, the experience of relaxation, of being able to just be, without struggling and striving to be any different than we are or requiring that others be different than what they are. That is what we all want—to just be able to relax and be okay just the way we are and to be okay with others just the way they are.

When someone gives us this gift of acceptance, we love them. What a gift! It is a gift you would never reject and hopefully one you will return because returning it—giving others this gift—brings you the experience of love. Loving and accepting others feels good. It is its own reward. It isn’t even necessary for others to love and accept you in return because it’s enough to just feel love and acceptance for others.

The ego loves, or tries to love, in order to get love or something else it wants. But this isn’t really love. It’s more like being nice, and it may not entail acceptance at all, but something more like tolerance for the purpose of getting something. This is a very different experience than love. Tolerating people is better than not tolerating them, but it’s not the same as enjoying them, which can only come from true acceptance. You accept others because you appreciate the unique expression of life that they are. What an amazing thing these human forms are! And all the different personalities! When we can just let people be the way they are, it is such a relief—for us and for them. Allowing people to just be is loving them, and this appreciation and allowing comes from Essence. It is how Essence, our true Self, feels about life and every one of its creations.

What makes someone lovable? Certainly their acceptance of us makes them lovable. But what also makes them lovable is their acceptance of themselves. People who accept themselves, who are gentle and kind to themselves, are also gentle and kind to others. We see these qualities in them, and we relax; and when we relax, we return to Essence. People who love and accept themselves are lovable because they reflect Essence, and that’s what we all really want—not someone to do our every bidding and match our every fantasy. What we really want is to be with someone who knows how to love because our deepest desire is to love. Therefore, we are drawn to those who know how to love. They are our teachers—the way-showers in this world. And this is our destiny as well—to be a place of refuge, where egos dissolve and all that is left is the love that we are.

“Since love is lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?”
—from a song by Enya